For Position Only: Publishing’s Time of Transition
I had a great time at Seybold San Francisco last week, seeing old friends and listening to interesting debates on a variety of hot-button topics. But if William Shakespeare were writing a play based on the scene at the Moscone Center, he probably would have called it “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Because truly, there wasn’t much news. Oh sure, lots of “partnerships” and “strategic alliances” were announced — Adobe wins the prize here, with about a dozen such announcements — and OK sure, Microsoft introduced its e-book Reader, a strategy that may have long term impact but is yet viewed with appropriate skepticism by high-end publishers. The throngs of attendees who queued up around the block to see Steve Jobs’ keynote were treated to a rehash of his Macworld speech — OS X isn’t shipping just yet — as well as a buggy demo.
Twenty Years On
All of the excitement at the show revolved around the current state of transition facing publishers, and the sometimes fantastic visions about what publishing will look like in 5, 10, even 20 years. We got to hear Sun Microsystems’ John Gage speculate on the impact of digital paper when it comes to market in the next five years, for example, and whether it will lead to information being published on such surfaces as floors, walls, curtains, and even clothes. We heard futurist Paul Saffo say that for the next 20 years, “we’re in for an age of policy by piracy,” and that we’re currently in a time of “creative destruction” as society and the government figure out how to adapt to Napster and all of the changes being brought about by new technology.
There were debates on whether e-books need to be or should be printable and how copyright will be protected as content become “modularized” and “granularized,” and there were warnings issued about the imperative of accepting e-commerce, and how very soon we’ll be designing and preparing content for wireless Internet appliances — PDAs, cell phones, e-book readers, and devices we can’t yet even conceptualize. (Read my lips: XML.) And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Dazzled by Design
All of this makes fascinating fodder when you’re sitting in an audience watching speakers (yes, mostly white men) who’ve made millions or who hope to make millions off of design software, digital rights management software, PDF, dot-coms, and more. They sit up on stage with a spotlight burning down on them and snazzy blue-and-yellow posters and graphics surrounding them, and you think, “Wow, what an amazing time we live in. The desktop publishing revolution was nothing. What as-yet-undeveloped technology will my grandchildren take for granted one day?”
Then as the week wears on, the adrenaline turns to fatigue, and then everyone gets in their car or on the bus, train, plane and goes back to their office, where this week we’re back to the same old grind. Designers use Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXPress to design a brochure, and then the Web team laboriously extracts the content and repurposes it for the Web, perhaps anticipating the capability to optimize and slice images in Photoshop 6.0 soon enough. The prepress shop uses PDF occasionally but not for most jobs, and the printer generates Matchprints and bluelines for exacting customers who don’t trust the digital CTP workflow. Adobe’s demo of Acrobat for the Palm Pilot becomes a distant memory; the banter about XML echoes in our ears. No one rushes out to buy digital asset management systems with APIs and JavaScripts that hook to Web content management systems; no one calls their printer and urges them to sign up with an ASP partner to bring job management capabilities online.
The More Things Change
Well, a few people might seize the moment and take action, but you know what? It’s OK if they don’t. Changes happen all in due course, slowly and surely, and one day we’ll look back at predictions we heard this week about e-books and wireless Internet appliances just like we now look back at the promises vendors made 10 years ago about faster microprocessors (we couldn’t wait for our Apple Quadras) and affordable and reliable digital color proofs from the desktop (all hail Epson). So although there was much ado last week about technologies that don’t yet exist –at least, not in the lives and business activities of most of us mere mortals — we sometimes (say, twice a year, in Boston in the spring and San Francisco in the fall) need to step back and look where we’re going, and allow ourselves to indulge in lofty intellectual discussions.
Because what we find out is that we’re headed no holds barred into the 21st century, and we as content creators of all types are the ones who are going to shape, define, and mold the dissemination of information from here on out. So hold onto your hats, folks. The party is just beginning.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on September 7, 2000
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